Groups:
I love groups; they work for some reason.  I don’t know if it’s the culture or just kids in general but for my classroom, the kids would much rather help each other out than listen to me teach all period.  When I combined groups and projects, my second favorite teaching technique, the kids found they enjoyed learning.  The grouping strategies ranged from pairs to four or five people in a group.  Larger groups were not as successful and I mostly used either two or three to a group.  One necessary grouping function was to use the books in Geometry.  I had an incomplete classroom set of books so whenever I needed to have them work out of the books, groups were necessary but welcomed by the students. 

I measured the success by how involved the students were in the activity, how much they enjoyed it, and whether they worked well together.  For nearly all the group activities I gave, they were involved and gave more effort than I would get form them individually.  They would often ask for more group activities. 

 

These pictures show students working in groups. The pictures will open in a new window.

GROUP PICTURE 1	GROUP PICTURE 2
GROUP PICTURE 3	GROUP PICTURE 4
GROUP PICTURE 5	GROUP PICTURE 6

These pictures show the group drawings. They were done alongside a straw polyhedron project.

DRAWING 1

DRAWING 2

DRAWING 3